Autonomy Cubein collaboration with Jacob AppelbaumAutonomy Cube is a sculpture designed to be housed in art museums, galleries, and civic spaces. The sculpture is meant to be both “seen” and “used.” This happens in several ways. Several Internet-connected computers housed within the work create an open Wi-Fi hotspot call...

Six LandscapesLecture at CCCIn this talk, artist Trevor Paglen discusses his work attempting to see the various aspects of the secret state. In examples ranging from tracking spy satellites to foraging through the bureaucratic refuse of CIA front companies, Paglen will discuss methods used to identify a...

The Last Pictures - OzymundiasWerner Herzog reads OzymundiasAn excerpt from the Last Pictures launch event in New York City, where Herzog and Paglen were in conversation. Launch footage shows a Proton-M rocket with the Last Pictures onboard heading to geostationary orbit from the launch complex at Baikonur, Kazakhstan in November 2012.

In 1963 NASA launched the first communications satellite “Syncom 2” into a geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean. Since then, humans hav...

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In 1963 NASA launched the first communications satellite “Syncom 2” into a geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean. Since then, humans have slowly and methodically added to this space-based communications infrastructure. Currently, more than 800 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit form a man-made ring of satellites around Earth at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers. Most of these spacecraft powered down long ago, yet continue to float aimlessly around the planet. Geostationary satellites are so far from Earth that their orbits never decay. The dead spacecraft in orbit have become a permanent fixture around Earth, not unlike the rings of Saturn. They will be the longest-lasting artifacts of human civilization, quietly floating through space long after every trace of humanity has disappeared from the planet’s surface.